But regardless of your New Year’s countdown habits, you likely also have habits related to the days leading up to and just after New Year’s Day:

Recovering from a hangover?

Cleaning the whole house

New Year’s shopping

New Year’s Resolutions & planning

And so on

For me, when I was younger, the New Year marked a time when I would “rededicate” myself to pursuing my goals. I’d make new goals, new resolutions, and think about the kind of person I wanted to be in the future. But, as I’ve grown older, the New Year has taken on a bit of a different feeling.

For one thing, I no longer feel it’s wise to “wait” until the New Year to start new goals and commitments. The motivation you feel at the New Year may be only slightly greater than the motivation you feel when the spark ignites in your mind for a new lifestyle.

Plus, the biggest problem we all tend to have with New Year’s resolutions is that we just plain make way too many of them at one time, and so overwhelm ourselves within 1-2 months by trying to keep up with all of them. Example:

This year I’m going to…

lose weight

go to the gym every day

save more money

pay off debt

develop a reading habit

meditate more

study Korean every day

and so on

Now, overlooking the fact that these goals are not S.M.A.R.T goals and are way to generalized to do us much measurable good, there are just way too many of them at once – especially if these are things you haven’t yet been doing up to now anyway.

Modify your habits

A much better way to approach goal setting would be to upgrade or modify habits you’ve already been doing, and / or choose ONE major new thing to add into your life at a time. If and when the new habit “sticks,” then you can think about adding in another new habit, but not sooner (this will typically take between 30-60 days at a minimum). Example:

I’m already doing these things, so here’s how I’ll upgrade them…

Going to the gym every morning = increase the number of exercises (from 4 to 6 or 8, from 15-20 minutes to 30-40 minutes), and add in more free-weight days in addition to machine days (maybe half and half)

“Reading” about a book per week using the Audible app = write a short book review and upload it to one of my sites immediately after finishing the book

And so on

Something new? Well, I have many ideas, but I should really choose ONE to just focus on consistently until it becomes a solid habit.

Options:

Daily calisthenics exercise

Consistent blogging / content creation on KeyToKorean.com

100 Days of Code (daily coding challenge)

Consistent blogging about coding / design

and so on

While none of the lists above are all-inclusive, they give me a starting point. In particular, this website has not received much attention recently because I’ve been taking on much more work responsibility. But I’d like to see that change for various reasons.

Start With Why

One of the best books I’ve read in the past five years is called Start With Why by Simon Sinek, and while I can’t currently remember detailed specifics from it, I can easily recount the main idea (which is present in the title itself). Start with WHY.

In everything you do, Start with WHY. Ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?

Why do I want to do this?

Why is this important?

Why THIS particular task and not some other task?

and so on

Ask yourself as many WHY questions as you can so that you can clearly nail down your motivations and purpose for choosing or doing a particular thing. A quote by Friedrich Nietzsche has sometimes been paraphrased to say:

In other words, if you motivation is SOLID enough, you will find the persistence and grit to push through the pain and boredom enough to make progress toward your goals. And this is another point many of us get WRONG about Goal setting.

Our ultimate goal shouldn’t be the attainment of the goal itself, but the progress and growth we experience along the way to attaining that goal.

– A means to an end result– Unending; allows us to “keep playing”– Immediate, visible, measurable results

Goals are the finish line; but we’ve got a long way to get there. And after that, what’s next? Is there something next, or is that just “the end”?

Systems are immediate, present realities that allow us to take visible, measurable, daily steps toward our end goals. But with good enough systems, your end goal is not an end itself, just a stepping stone along a longer path toward great achievement.

For example, Korean-learning goals vs. systems:

Goal:

Achieve TOPIK Level 6 by such-and-such date (but I’m currently Level 2… it looks such a long way off, I’m sure to get demotivated somewhere along the way…)